What I Did Last Night: The Inaugural Webby Film & Video Awards

For a moment, wedged between film crews on the wrong side of the velvet ropes, I feel like some rookie reporter for a second-rate fashion magazine, covering some big red carpet gala, armed with only a low-quality hand-held voice...

For a moment, wedged between film crews on the wrong side of the velvet ropes, I feel like some rookie reporter for a second-rate fashion magazine, covering some big red carpet gala, armed with only a low-quality hand-held voice recorder and my personal Canon point-and-shoot digital camera that I pulled from my desk on the way out the door.

It's the not the Oscars, but this year, the inaugural Web Film & Video portion of the Webby awards is a reasonable facsimile. Sure, the star power isn't quite there--the majority of the faces that are paraded in front of us for photo-ops and extremely brief interviews wouldn't be recognizable to people who don't frequent sites like YouTube--but as I dodge boom mics and lighting rigs like an US Weekly reporter on deadline, it might as well be.

I managed to convince a few folks of my validity as a reporter, thanks to the press badge strung around my neck, though a few (such as the aloof Jessica Rose, who plays the shy LonelyGirl15--no wonder she won the Best Actress Prize) slipped pretty quickly into the cocktail party that was occurring simultaneously, just beyond the flashbulbs.

Kent Nichols and a Ninja, Ask a Ninja

What has the reaction been like from the ninja community thus far?

Kent Nichols: It's been very supportive. The thing about Ask a Ninja is it's the first time a ninja has really come out and done something like this. So we're not really taking on ninjitsu, we're taking on the cultural construct of ninjas and playing around with that. It's been a really warm embrace from the actual martial artist community.

Are there a lot of copycat ninja sites?

Ninja: Yeah, but we've always embraced people who want to participate with us. That's been a big thing about Ask a Ninja. I reached out to those people to find out what they thought, because for years, there's always been horrible misconceptions about ninjas, because everything you see in the movies is wrong. So I want people to talk to me and find out what the truth of it is.

But you do kill a lot of people.

N: I do, I do. I do kill a heck of a lot, but it's really positive killing.

KN: Thinning the herd, thinning the herd.

Are there any questions you won't answer?

N: I haven't found one yet.

Do you ever take any time off? When you go home are you still answering questions?

N: I don't know, I mean, I really like it. I like to get one question and really sink my sword into it. Really try to bleed it out, all over the place.

KN: Yeah, and he pops in, he pops out, so at any given filming situation, he'll only be on set for maybe--

N: Fifteen seconds, and then he has to slow it down, and make it three minutes long.

So you haven't franchised yet? You're not like the Blue Man Group, with different ninjas answering questions all over the country?

KN: We're looking at the Bozo the Clown model.

N: I'll tell you this, there are ninjas all over the country--you just don't know about them.

Angela Kinsey, Star of The Office Webisodes

How did the webisodes get spun off?

Angela Kinsey: Oscar, Kevin, and I sit in the corner, and for the whole first season, our computers were just props. We had all of this time on our hands, and we would pass notes, and whenever a director or a writer would come by, we'd be like, "Hey, hey, we got a bit!" We'd have a short, three-line improv that we'd do, and we'd say, "So, what do you think? More accounting in this episode?" And then we told them that we'd come up with a spinoff called, "Los Accountadores, Oscar, Angela, y Kevin," and it was gonna be on Telemundo. We had this whole drill that we kept doing, and finally they said, "You know what, guys? We're going to do some webisodes." We finally broken them down. Come over to the corner and see the freaks that make up the accounting department. We're really proud that the webisodes are getting all of this attention, because we'd like to think that our pestering is what borned them.

Did you know what a webisode was, before you were in one?

No. They were like, "We're going to do webisodes," and I was like, "Webawhat?" But I'm happy to be here now, celebrating them.

This character has sort of taken on legs of her own. How much of her is there in you?

Oh my goodness, don't ask my husband. I'm a little anal, when it comes to being punctual. I don't like waiting on people. I'm very organized. I do have an area in my house for wrappings. I have a drawer for tissue paper, and a drawer for ribbons, and a drawer for wrapping accessories, if you will--you know, like at Christmas, if you have a little wreath. This is really fascinating stuff.

David Michel-Davis, Executive Director, Webby Awards

Do you consider this to be The Webbys 2.0?

David Michel-Davis: You know, I think it's more like Webbys 11.0, but yeah, the Internet's changed a lot and we've changed a lot. We've gone through some transitions.

It was slow for a couple of years in there, but do you feel like you're back on top? Is this as good as they've ever been?

In the end, it's just whether it's the best it's even been for the online community and the people we honor, and I don't know if it's the best, but it's pretty awesome. I think we've had a lot of great people come out this year that we haven't had in the past, and I think that's really exciting.

Is Web video something that you've been itching to do for a while?

So long. I've been wanting to do it for 10 years. It all finally came together. All the pieces came together. The prices of cameras went down, bandwidth got a little better, Flash 9 Player came out, which made it so easy for people to finally watch the stuff. People started putting stuff out there, and it really caught on, and all of the sudden, you really had a marketplace.

Do you see big futures for the honorees here tonight, beyond the Web?

I think there are a lot of very talented people here tonight, and I think a lot of them are going to do very well. But the thing is, I think maybe this year it's about beyond the Web, but in the future, it's going to be about the Web. A billion people are on the Internet. That's a much bigger audience than you get on one movie channel, one movie theater, or on DVD release. Ultimately people want to be where their work is exposed, and I think the Internet is that place. I think the Internet will be the destination, and not the breaking ground.

Are you at a point now where most of your video-watching occurs online?

I do watch a lot of video online, but I think the one thing that we haven't figured out is it's about sharing. That's what I love about it, and I think that's what a lot of people here love about it. It's about sharing links over e-mail or IM. It's a cultural sharing experience. TV's not really like that. It's about sitting on your couch, doing your thing. I think when TV figures out how to do that sharing, and the Internet figures out that more relaxed experience, I think we'll be more where we need to be.

Fritz Grobe: It's become a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job; packets of Mentos and bottles of Diet Coke, all the time.

Stephen Voltz: Well, not quite that--but almost 98% of the time.

But you have work going on the side, as well.

SV: Yeah, I have a law practice that I'm trying to keep alive. It's had a lot of neglect in the past 12 months.

Have you begun focusing on any kind of Internet advocacy?

SV: Yeah, that's what we've been doing in the past year.

Will winning a Webby change life even more than before?

FG: Well, it's an incredible way to end an incredible year.

SV: It's almost a year since we launched the video, so it's a real nice cap.

FG: It was actually a year ago, yesterday.

Had you done videos prior to this one?

SV: This was actually our first. We had done a lot of live theater before.

FG: We work out of a theater in the little town of Buckfield, Maine. It's a town of about 1,500 people, with a dozen world-renowned performers.

SV: It's a great little artists' community--Fritz is a five-time gold-medal-winning juggler, among other talents. There are other performers of equally great caliber, and our idea with Eepy Bird is that we would find a way to take all of these great performers and put them online to get them a larger audiences. It's shortform, two-minute pieces, which are very visual. But this is our first video, and we've been pretty much doing this since we started.

So the format--two guys in a science experiment setting--will be continuing on for a while?

SV: Those guys are doing more stuff.

FG: We've been in the labs over the past few months, working on some crazy ideas, but we've also been expanding the Eepy Bird family. We've got a new video in the works with a stuntman, and we'll see what happens. He'll hopefully be making his debut soon.

SV: If he survives.

Do either of you have any kind of a science background?

SV: I have a labcoat--

FG: Actually they're not even labcoats--they're butchers' coats.

SV: We're actually butchers.

You haven't splurged yet and bought actual labcoats?

FG: Nope, we still get them from Tilden's Market, which they still say on the back of them.

So the key right now is to change as little as possible, to keep the magic there?

FG: Exactly.

The Ceremony.

The event is hosted by Rob Cordry of Daily Show and cancelled-Fox-sitcom fame. Having been recently relieved of his network television obligations, Cordry plays his emceeing duties a bit blue, using the phrase "ball punch" a half-dozen or so times over the course of the next hour and a half.

Webby Executive Director David Michel-Davies explains that he has been waiting for this day for a decade, and proceeds to rattle off the absurdly long list of event sponsors, finally introducing Cordry, who enters the room dressed as a banana after a short delay--a bit ensues involving an increasingly frustrated Cordry yelling at the music guy (Chuck), for not playing the music cue. That would be "Peanut Butter and Jelly Time."

The emcee then proceeds to perform a live interpretation of "Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years," involving a lot of facial twitches, and at for one brief moment, a wig. Cordry then sets the ground rules. Only one representative is allowed to come up per winning entry. Each acceptance speech must be five words long. If a representative isn't here, we're skipping that part. You can pick up the statuette on stage, but can't take it home. One will be mailed to you. Besides, "you don't know where that's been." Cordry makes a quick and topical TB joke, and we're off to the races.

Category: New and Documentary
Webby Award Winner: Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone
Speech: War, what's it good for? (Sites is in Singapore, so he sent in footage of an incredibly long acceptance speech.
People's Voice Winner: Save the Internet.com
Speech: Screw Verizon, Save the Internet

Category: Comedy Long Form
Webby Award Winner: Honesty
Speech: (Pulls out and unfolds long speech) Thanks.
People's Voice Winner: Statler and Waldorf From the Balcony
Speech: Not bad for two geezers. (Stalter appears in the balcony of the theater, marking the first time that I have ever been in a room with a real, live Muppet.)

Brian Heater has worked at a number of tech pubs, including Engadget, Laptop, and PCMag (where he served as Senior Editor). Most recently, he was as the Managing Editor of TechTimes.com. His writing has appeared in Spin, Wired, Playboy, Entertainment Weekly, The Onion, Boing Boing, Publishers Weekly, The Daily Beast and various other publications. He hosts the weekly Boing Boing interview podcast RiYL, has appeared as a regular NPR contributor and shares his Queens apartment with a rabbit named Lucy.
More »